Black days ahead

I remember the day he and his wife came into my church in Lutcher. They are from the Caribbean, but they are black none the same. When they came in, they were the first black folks to enter Lutcher United Methodist Church.

My friends were running late and were looking for my church. They stopped and were given directions to another church than mine. See, there's a black version (almost a photo negative) of the LUMC just down the road, across the railroad tracks. It was there my friends found themselves first, and they were welcomed handily. They asked for me, a Caucasian friend, and were told there was no way I would be there. Members of that church thought for a minute, laughed about it and sent them on their way to my church.

My friends were welcomed warmly for any visitor to that church was a moment of joy. Still, they were the first blacks in the church, and it was the year 2,000.

I read this yesterday : In Tomahawk, Ky., a vote to bar interracial couples from a small church in eastern Kentucky  triggered hand-wringing and embarrassment.

It is, by the way, the year 2011 as a church tries to BAR interractial couples from entering its church. One must figure that homosexuals, drunks, closet wife abusers, smokers, druggies and such never are invited to this church, which one assumes has never shown grace to an outsider.

Nine members of  Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church backed their former pastor, with six opposed, in Sunday's vote to bar interracial couples from church membership and worship activities. Funerals were excluded.The vote was taken after most of the 40 people who attended Sunday services had left the church in Pike County, near the border with West Virginia. Many members left to avoid the vote.

Most members of the church "didn't want anything to do with this," said longtime church official Dean Harville, whose daughter and her black fiance had drawn pastor Melvin Thompson's ire.

At services earlier this year, Stella Harville, 24, who is working on her master's degree in optical engineering, sang "I Surrender All" with her fiance, Ticha Chikuni, 29, a Zimbabwe native, according to her father. Chikuni, an employee at Georgetown College in Kentucky, played the piano.

"There didn't appear to be any problem," Dean Harville said on Wednesday. "None whatsoever."

But Harville said Thompson told him the couple would not be allowed to sing at the church again. Thompson resigned in August but would not drop the issue.

Thompson told a local radio outlet, "I do not believe in interracial marriages, and I do not believe this (ban) will give our church a black eye at all." He could not be reached for comment.

There are numerous things I could write about this, but the simplest question is why the church is having a vote based upon what a former pastor would say and where is the current preacher in this. Be a leader man. Second, isn't Thompson crazy to think that the vote won't give his former church a black eye? Third, the 25 who left the church because they didn't want to vote are cowards. Fourth, where does Thompson come across this in scripture? Finally, I simply add, "good grief."

The church in America has so many problems today. We struggle and fight over the issue of homosexuality, which is covered with scripture to help us understand the issue. We're losing members over the fight about worship styles, which isn't even scriptural. Then issues of race come in and you just want to either smite them or sit down and weep.

We're headed to the baby's birth. I'm ready for the adult to return instead.